Louis McDonald Orr, MD, mandated that the Emory professorship he established in his name in 1961 should only be awarded to "persons of the highest qualifications, capacity, and character." The current Emory Urology faculty have agreed that Kenneth Ogan, MD, possesses these attributes, and unanimously approved his assumption of the Louis McDonald Orr Clinical Professorship of Urology.
Dr. Ogan is a foremost practitioner of applying laparoscopic, robotic, and thermal ablation surgical techniques to treating kidney cancer while preserving patients' kidney function. As co-director of the Emory Comprehensive Stone Center, he is involved in the prevention and endoscopic and percutaneous management of patients with kidney stones. In his academic role, he is a dedicated educator and mentor who has received two Emory Urology annual resident education awards. The broad regard for his skills as a consummate urological surgeon is signified by his election to current president of the Georgia Urological Association.
Dr. Orr was born in Cumming, GA, in 1899. He received his BSc and MD at Emory, did an internship at Brigham Hospital in Boston, and completed his urology residency at Lakeside Hospital, Cleveland. He established his practice in Orlando, FL, in 1927, and is reputed to have been the first doctor in the region to use radioactive isotopes to treat certain types of cancer. Prior to serving as a colonel in the medical corps during World War II, he was one of the founders of the American Board of Urology. He served presidential terms for the Southeastern Section of the American Urological Association in 1943, and for the American Medical Association in 1959. Dr. Orr passed away in 1961.
In testament to Dr. Orr's humanistic disposition, a letter he received from the men who served under his command during the war closed with the following words: "Colonel Orr's genuine interest in the welfare and morale of the enlisted men is one of the finer memories that will live long after less pleasant remembrances of war and army life sink into oblivion."
